Emotions of 'Sith,' Carried by Score

Though there are vocal dissenters, most film critics and "Star Wars" buffs seem pleased with the last installment of the epic, "Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith." George Lucas has received his highest praise since the first "Star Wars" film in 1977. Some critics have even conceded significant improvement in the acting of the handsome Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker.

But the member of the creative team whose contributions are largely being taken for granted is the composer John Williams. Music plays almost throughout the entire movie, and much of the emotional resonance critics are finding is stoked by Mr. Williams's surprisingly subdued and murky score, especially during the scenes of intimate human drama, such as they are. If you get involved in the fretful exchanges between Anakin and his love-struck young wife, Padmé (Natalie Portman), or if you are hooked by the dilemma of the Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), who yearns to believe in his disciple Anakin but senses the young warrior's rebellion, Mr. Williams deserves much of the credit.

Although Mr. Williams became a household name for "Star Wars" in the late 1970's, many critics poked fun at him for the comic-book excess of his scores. True, he was no Bernard Herrmann or Elmer Bernstein. But even in Mr. Williams's pre-"Jaws" days, when he was churning out disaster-flick music ("The Towering Inferno"), his work was thoroughly professional. At a time when synthesized film music was ascendant, he re-embraced the symphonic film score. Still, with all their bombastic blather, the early "Star Wars" scores invited kidding.

Mr. Williams has grown since then. The score to "E.T." shifted mood effortlessly, from tenderness to wonderment to opulently lyrical and unabashed emotion.

In "A.I." Mr. Williams made savvy use of metrically fractured rhythmic writing and percussion instruments to evoke the android world. The music during the film's "Hide and Seek" sequence, when the robot boy David plays games with his adoptive mother, who at this early stage of the story is still smitten with him, is especially ingenious. Built from gentle melodic riffs, including children's piano-practice tunes, quizzical harmonies and asymmetrical phrases, the music is at once beguiling and unsettling.

The score to "Catch Me if You Can," in keeping with its story about an ingenious young charlatan, is like jazzy, elusive chamber music. Here Mr. Williams proves adept at the less-is-more approach to film scoring.

Mr. Williams, with his suction-cup ear, has always been better at evoking existing styles than at conveying an original voice -- a voice like that of Thomas Newman, the classiest current film composer, whose richly harmonic and often quirky music ("The Shawshank Redemption," "Finding Nemo") is unmistakable. Still, evocation is one way to practice the film music craft, and in "Revenge of the Sith" Mr. Williams demonstrates his acute evocative skills.

The film begins, as it must, with his swashbuckling "Star Wars" theme playing as the credits roll by. But soon into the story (the second track on the Sony Classical recording of the score) you hear the haunting music for "Anakin's Dream." Seized with nightmarish premonitions that his pregnant wife will die in childbirth, Anakin sleeps fitfully while the quietly ominous music stirs primordially in the background.

There are hints of Ligeti-like atmospherics (surely Mr. Williams's homage to "2001") and echoes of Samuel Barber in the pungently chromatic harmony. A lacy theme is passed back and forth between solo string instruments. You may not remember this elusive melody when you leave the theater, but it conveys Anakin's inner doubts and longing for repose.

In an episode called "Battle of the Heroes," Mr. Williams has his "Carmina Burana" moment, complete with pummeling rhythms and a distant chorus intoning mournful ah's and ritualistic oh's -- a hokey device. In "Palpatine's Teachings" he evokes, or so it seems, Tibetan Buddhist chanting, with sustained moans in low male voices, tinkling percussion (like finger cymbals) and ruminative string writing.

The whole "Star Wars" epic has been likened to Wagner's "Ring" cycle. In the earlier films Mr. Williams certainly adopted the Wagnerian technique of using identifying themes (leitmotifs) to mark the appearances of specific characters, symbols and plot lines, though in the most thumping and heavy-handed way.

In the new film, when Anakin is on the brink of becoming Darth Vader, you know what's coming, and it comes: the treading "Darth Vader" theme, as much a trademark of the "Star Wars" enterprise as Han Solo action figures. But in general, Mr. Williams uses the leitmotif technique with greater subtlety here. Hints of themes thread through the score -- in inner voices, in wayward bass lines.

There is even an episode called "The Immolation Scene," an overt reference to Wagner's "Götterdämmerung." Having lost the ultimate light saber duel to Obi-Wan, Anakin starts slipping into a molten pool of volcanic muck. The Jedi master watches in despair as he allows the student he once loved, the chosen one who has turned to the dark side, to meet his fate (or so he assumes). Mr. Williams sensitively underplays this scene, writing wistful, aching music, a sort of sci-fi Sibelius.

The score is marred by formulaic bits. I wish Mr. Williams didn't signal every scene change with an orchestral crescendo. But since the story is told in innumerable scenes that come and go abruptly, Mr. Williams may be hoping that a sudden rush of intense orchestral music will make the constant scene shifts seem inevitable.

Some film composers command your attention -- with sweeping grandeur (Maurice Jarre's score for "Lawrence of Arabia"), with wistful lyricism (Elmer Bernstein's melancholic music for "To Kill a Mockingbird"). Mr. Williams is at his best when he thinks no one is paying much attention.

His concert pieces, like "Soundings," composed for the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, tend to be bustling, extroverted and eager to please. But film music can offer a composer an artful way to stay in the background. Mr. Williams practices that art admirably in "Revenge of the Sith."

A version of this article appears in print on , Section E, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; Emotions Of 'Sith,' Carried By Score. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe